Flying alone? You may be paying more than if you travel with someone else

Some airlines may be charging more for solo flights.

You go online and type in the cities, dates, and number of passengers. Well, put two passengers, and each of you may be cheaper than if you put one.

“Our team ran hundreds of searches,” Thrifty Traveler editor Kyle Potter told Action 9 investigator Jason Stoogenke. “There were some, I would say, particularly egregious examples out of Charlotte.”

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He says he found three airlines charging solo passengers more — American, Delta, and United — all for one-way flights specifically.

For example:

American

Charlotte to Austin: $504 for one passenger; $309 each for two.

Delta

Minneapolis to New York: $199 versus $118.

United

Chicago to Peoria: $269 and $151.

Stoogenke found these examples, all on American:

Charlotte to Fort Myers: $390 for one; $240 per person for two.

Charlotte to New Orleans: $454 for one; $279 each for two.

Chicago to Lexington: $214 and $189.

So why is this?

“It’s business,” Michael Lowrey said. He teaches at Wingate University and is an airline analyst and economist.

“It’s supply and demand. It’s willingness and ability. And those people that are more willing and able are more willing and able,” he said.

Lowrey and Potter believe the airlines are targeting business travelers. After all, they’re more likely to fly solo, more likely to buy a one-way ticket because it gives them more flexibility, and more likely to pay more.

“That person traveling on the corporate credit card probably doesn’t care that much if they get upcharged by 30 or 50 or 100 bucks,” Lowrey said.

“But the problem is that this doesn’t just affect business travelers. It also affects a family member who needs to fly across the country last minute because they need to attend to a medical emergency,” Potter said. “There are far more people out there who are booking solo tickets than just corporate travelers.”

To be fair:

1. Potter says sometime in June, after his site reported this practice, two of those airlines, Delta and United, seemed to have stopped, but not American.

2. Action 9 didn’t find other airlines charging single passengers more. Potter didn’t either.

3. Stoogenke found examples where flying solo actually landed a better deal. For example, a United flight for Charlotte to New York: One person, $1,351; two people, $1,566 each.

Stoogenke reached out to two groups that speak for the airline industry, Airlines for America and the International Air Transport Association.

Both said they don’t talk about pricing and referred him to the airlines themselves. But American, Delta, and United did not respond in time for this report.

So how do you find the best deals?

Well, there’s no one answer. Try a combo:

• Consider flights that aren’t nonstop.

• Yes, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays tend to be cheaper. But not always. So start there, but stay open-minded.

• Don’t assume websites promising bargains really deliver. That said: Potter swears by Google Flights.

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